Frozen Sandwiches Sabbatical. And Contest! By Jemina.

GASP! Frozen Sandwiches on SABBATICAL?!

Never fear, readers. Joy and I will be taking a short break to focus on personal projects near and dear to our hearts (and hopefully, wallets), so we've devised a clever way to keep you entertained for the next few weeks!

Contest: Ever read some of our stories and, while laughing hysterically, experience a flashback of your own to earlier days of pre-pubescent horror? Since we have now moved up from tens of fans to dozens, we're sure there's a Frozen Sandwich-like story of your own that you'd like to share.

Your story can reiterate any funny event from your childhood, as long as embarrassment and hilarity abound. Keep it relatively short, no longer than 2 pages double-spaced.

All submissions must be sent to: frozensandwiches@gmail.com

Extra Credit points for including a childhood photo!

The winner will have their story posted and receive the praise and adoration that accompanies the life of a notorious blogger.

Good luck with those repressed memories and we look forward to reading your submissions!

Ode to the Hand-me-down(and down, and down, and down)s. By Jemina.

Most of you non-firstborns out there are probably familiar with the almighty hand-me-down. For the 1% of our readers who led charmed lives and have no idea what I’m talking about, a hand-me-down (“HMD”), is an article of clothing, often a shirt, pair of pants, or a dress one inherits from an older sibling (hopefully one of the same sex, but this is not always the case). A HMD’s chief purpose is to help parents economically justify having more than one child. For the Boyds, HMDs were commonplace; even James the eldest was not exempt. James inherited his clothes from another church family, so not even he escaped the cold, slightly worn grasp of used goods.

As young children we thought nothing of the trash bags overflowing with “new” clothes that showed up on our porch once or twice a year. Giddy at the prospect of acquiring new (read: old) clothes, we tried on things until we found the items we liked (and some that Syl demanded we keep), put the castoffs back in the trashbags, and carried them to the Salvation Army where some other poor family could purchase our reject HMDs for 10 cents apiece. Given the frequency with which growth spurts hit in our house, it didn't take long for HMDs to make their way down the family line to me.

Case in point: the Summer of 1984 brought with it an exciting new addition to James' wardrobe—a practically new (translation: less than one year had elapsed since the original date of purchase) Mickey Mouse t-shirt with a navy blue ringed collar and sleeves! This wardrobe coup was the result of a hasty decision by a fellow church family to rid their home of all things cartoon and rodent-like after hearing a sermon about satanic subliminal messages in Disney cartoons. After enduring many seasons of HMDs that were a touch out of fashion, James hit the HMD jackpot. It was as if Walt Disney himself shined his devilish light upon us and decided to bless us with a cool piece of clothing. I say “us” because we all knew that, if we played our cards right, we’d someday get to wear the Mickey shirt, too! Josh and Joy stared longingly at James every time he donned the Mickey shirt, anxiously awaiting the day the hallowed torch would be passed on to them.

Unfortunately for James, his time with Mickey was short lived; 1985 brought an additional 3 inches to his frame, rendering the golden tee a midriff on his already lanky, scrawny frame. Thus, Josh was blessed with Mickey's presence and Joy, sensing her time was nigh, began formulating a plan to make the t-shirt hers. She could hardly believe her luck when Josh tried on the shirt and realized the “husky” jeans he wore also applied to his torso. Poor Mickey looked bloated and misshapen stretched over Josh's belly, and Josh resigned himself to the fact that he would not get to live the dream. Ever the sympathetic sibling, Joy quickly capitalized on Josh’s grief, snatched the shirt from Josh, and ran to her room to see which culottes (re: gaucho pants in unflattering textures and colors) best matched with it. Evidently Joy concluded that Mickey matched with every pair of culottes in her closet, as he and she made a joint appearance in practically all of our home videos for the next few years.

When the time came for me to inherit the now slightly less coveted Tee of Mickey, the ringed collar and sleeves had faded from navy blue to a dull purple and were stretched out and virtually elastic-less. The shirt itself had grown threadbare due to hundreds of washings and was pockmarked with holes under the sleeves and seams. Mickey's wrinkled and sagging face bore the tell-tale signs of a mouse that’d been ridden hard and put up wet during his years with the Boyd family, and his now cracked gray eyes begged us to put him down, Old Yeller-style. Though I was hell bent on claiming and wearing my piece of history, this dream was abruptly shattered when I, a fellow recipient of the “husky” gene, attempted to squeeze into the t-shirt and Mickey’s face summarily ripped in two. Only then was Mickey quietly laid to rest in our trash can following a touching eulogy by James and Joy, the only true beneficiaries of Mickey’s magic.

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Baptist Bible Birthdays. By Joy.

Fact: my birthday is tomorrow. Happy Birthday to me!!! It’s no secret that the Boyds like to make a big deal out of birthdays (well, really just us Boyd Sisters). The reasons for this are twofold. First, nobody made a really big deal about our birthdays growing up, what with the deaf parents, four children, and abject poverty, and what not. Therefore, we feel the need to make up for lost time. Second, it is a shameless ploy for attention, but we can’t quite help ourselves, given our simple upbringing.

I thank God every day that my actual age was not measured by the number of childhood birthday parties I had. If that were the case, I’d be approximately three years old. See, in the Boyd household, each child got to have a birthday party once every four years. I’m not exactly sure why or when the quadrennial Boyd birthday tradition began but I have a couple hunches. First, as to the “why,” I suspect that Phil’s or Syl’s decision (let’s be honest, all signs point to Syl) to limit birthday “parties” to once every fourth year was—as most decisions in the Boyd household—economically driven. Second, I believe this decision came on the heels of the birth of their fourth child, Jemina (yet another negative circumstance for which Jemina is to blame).

The birthday countdown evidently began in the year of one’s birth, with the first official birthday “party” being thrown at the age of 4. You might envision a quadrennial birthday party as being quite the affair—a happening scene with a menagerie of docile farm animals to pet and ride, a clown painting faces, a magician sawing partygoers’ bodies in half, perhaps, or a giant blown up moonwalk castle. Sadly, I’m using the term “party” loosely. A “party” in the Boyd household meant that, on the appointed day (i.e., a fourth, eighth, or twelfth birthday), we could invite two or three friends—from church—to the Boyd house for a maximum of two hours. There would be a cake and ice cream of our choosing and we could request our favorite meal from Syl’s limited repertoire of recipes (all of which incorporated Sams Club chicken in some form or fashion). On the “off years,” we still got to pick our cake and meal but we had to settle for a family-only celebration.

To add insult to injury, my birthday always coincided with our church’s annual week long bible conference. A “bible conference” is, to all of my unchurched friends, an event involving much hoopla and hootenanny, like Woodstock or Bonnaroo, but instead of a week of hedonistic concerts put on by various music artists, the featured performers were preachers, and the main events- sermons. For seven seemingly interminable days and nights, we sat through sermons from dawn until dusk. Because I was of the opinion that anything any of the visiting preachers said in their sermons was of little to no benefit to me, a nearly perfect child, you can certainly understand why I resented having to waste a whole week of my summer vacation—my birth week no less—listening to preachers pontificate on salvation, baptism, repentance, and the like. Especially when I could be doing much more important things, like perfecting my Native American battle cry, or polishing the faux gold plate on my musket.

Every year, I’d ask Syl why we had to attend every single service, and she replied that because Phil was a preacher on staff, people “expected us to be there.” Plus, she added, in a feeble attempt to sweeten the pot for me, “you want to be there if a revival happens, don’t you?” A “revival,” as I understood it, was an elusive but much sought after religious phenomenon wherein hordes of people very suddenly became convicted of their wicked ways (read: addictions to rock-n-roll and smoking cigarettes) and decided to “get right” with the Lord. Growing up I was not sure what “getting right” meant, exactly. I mean, I was perfect already. Further complicating matters was the common metaphor church people used to describe people who’d been “revived.” These people were said to be “On Fire” for Jesus. I always thought being on fire was a bad thing, but the way people talked about it made it sound like a biblical badge of honor, something to aspire to. Try as I might, I could not figure out why preachers devoted so much time and energy trying to save people from an eternity in a lake of fire if they were just going to turn around and ask these new believers to set themselves on fire for Jesus!

Notwithstanding the fact that I spent the better part of most birthdays in church, I have made up for lost time in recent years. When Jemina started college, she and I started throwing each other birthday parties in an effort to recapture our phantom birthday years. I will freely admit here that throwing said parties during adulthood does have its benefits. This year, for example, I expect Jemina to have set up the piñata, margarita machine, kiddie pool o’ queso, and twelve-piece mariachi band I requested by the time I arrive in Nashville for my fiesta. So, for all of you who will not get to celebrate my birthday with me (unfortunately this means most of you), I propose a toast. If you have a drink handy (adult beverage or otherwise), raise it and drink to 28 Years of Joy!

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